Zulfikar Ghose Books

Displaying the astonishing range of imaginative power and formal invention he is justly acclaimed for, Ghose lays bare the multiple layers of human experience in settings as diverse as South America, India and Pakistan, and Islamic Spain. These stories written with a subtly seductive prose, are to be savoured as much for their rich structure and wonderful language as for the depth of their revelations. "Zulfikar Ghose has ranked with and outranked several of the best English writers in England and America." - Review of Contemporary Fiction

First published in London in 1967, The Murder of Aziz Khan has acquired an important place in the literary history of Pakastani writing in English. It presents a picture of Pakastani society in its earliest years in the persons of Aziz Khan, who represents ancient and traditional values, and the Shah brothers, who are out to exploit the resources and people of the new country for their personal gain. The story is built around this central conflict between the Shah brothers and Aziz Khan, whose land they are determined to possess and which he refuses to sell. Intricately plotted, the story gradually unfolds, revealing the emotions of its characters. It exposes the ruthless brutality of the Shah brothers and the effects of moral corruption on them; and finally, in brilliant prose imbued with an astonishing poetical intensity, the book describes the suffering of Aziz Khan with such poignancy that it seems a symbolic vision of a wound in the heart of the new nation.

No matter how many times he did his sums, Filipe Gamboa's salary never amounted to his daydream. He would always want more than he possessed. He longed for a great fortune not only for a luxury apartment and a Mercedes Benz but also to ensure his daughter, Mariana, had the best possible future with the best possible education. His misfortune is to be passed over at work, and then arrested at a political demonstration. After which he is put in a small boat and abandoned in the ocean . . . But when death seems inevitable, another world beckons. New lives can be swapped for old, and Gamboa on his mysterious island sanctuary can create an illusion that the intervening years have not passed, and that his idea of the past is merely a foreknowledge of the future. With poetic insight and surreal logic Zulfikar Ghose depicts a universe where individuals are inextricably bound by the perversities of fate, able only to dream escape.